Kabul – Biden Makes Unannounced Visit to Afghanistan

Kabul, Afghanistan – Vice President Biden flew into Kabul on Monday night for a round of high-level meetings as the Obama administration seeks assurance that its Afghanistan strategy is taking hold.

Biden’s unannounced visit brings him to the Afghan capital at a time of uncertainty in the war. Military commanders claim progress against the Taliban in the areas where they’ve concentrated U.S. troops, particularly in southern Afghan provinces of Kandahar and Helmand. And President Obama last month called the war effort “on track.”

But the insurgency remains potent in wide swaths of the country. The Afghan government has strongly opposed parts of the U.S. military strategy and not yet addressed its own problems with corruption. Insurgent leaders, meanwhile, operate safely from sanctuaries in Pakistan.

U.S. military officials are waiting until spring, when the Taliban fighting season typically resumes, before drawing firmer conclusions about how much they’ve disrupted the insurgency and whether the Afghan government has stepped into the gap.

The recent death of Obama’s special envoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, removed a diplomatic heavyweight from the scene and raised questions about whether the Obama administration will shift its approach.

Holbrooke’s acting successor, Frank Ruggiero, was also in Kabul on Monday following a visit to Pakistan. He came in part to assure officials in both countries that Holbrooke’s position of special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan-a new office that has not always fit easily within the State Department-will remain intact, although Ruggiero is not expected to keep the job long-term.

Biden has been a regular visitor to Afghanistan over the years. As senator, he was the first elected American official to arrive in Kabul after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and was a strong ally of Karzai’s.

But in the past couple of years, Biden’s relations with Karzai have grown shakier. Biden been skeptical of Karzai’s reliability and his willingness to address the corruption in his government. The two men had a combative dinner in Kabul in February 2008 while Biden was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And just before Obama’s inauguration, Biden delivered the message to Karzai that he would not have the same type of chummy relationship with Obama that he had with President Bush.

The White House has seemed engage Karzai more directly in recent months, including more frequent discussions between the two leaders. On Dec. 3, Obama flew to Afghanistan for the second time as president, and addressed U.S. troops at Bagram Air Field, although he cancelled a helicopter trip to Kabul to see Karzai due to bad weather.

In the administration’s wrangling over an Afghanistan strategy, Biden’s vision has so far not prevailed. He urged a smaller American military footprint with a more narrow focus on counter-terrorism operations using Special Operations Forces and drone strikes to target Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, rather than more ambitious nation-building to win the allegiance of the Afghan people.

Instead, Obama decided to send 30,000 more American soldiers to Afghanistan, boosting the total to 100,000 U.S. troops. Obama has also moved away from the deadline he set of July 2011 for those troops to begin pulling out. While the administration still says there will be some drawdown starting this summer, the focus of the American timeline has clearly shifted to 2014, when officials hope the Afghan government can take responsibility for security.

The extension is an implicit recognition of the difficulty of quickly defeating a Taliban insurgency that has only grown more pervasive and violent over the past several years. But it is also an attempt to convince Afghan and Pakistani officials that the United States does not intend to abandon the region anytime soon. That is a message Biden is likely to reiterate to Karzai, while urging government reform and attention to the type of corruption that turns Afghans to the Taliban.

Afghan officials meanwhile continue to push for more authority over how the war is fought and how billions of dollars of foreign aid is spent. Karzai supports a less intrusive U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, and has pushed to curtail inflammatory Special Operations forces night raids and reduce civilian casualties. He also wants his country to benefit from development projects and not just serve as a battlefield against terrorism.